CAWOOD Marketing Blog

Using video to help SEO

Most if not all website owners would like higher rankings in Google and for users to spend more time engaging on their site. If you are one of them, why not kill these two proverbial birds with one stone - video.

For each search, Google's goal is to provide the most relevant results that also provide the best user experience. This includes a mix of media, including web pages, video, images, latest news, and more. If your website contains only pages, you're missing out on a significant opportunity.

Much like the content of a webpage, Google spiders are able to read copy within video titles on websites like YouTube or Vimeo, as well as descriptions and associated tags. These pieces of information (when well-optimized) communicate to Google the content of the video. When a video link appears on a page of search results, Google includes a thumbnail image. This makes the listing stand out, putting it in an excellent position to get clicked and increasing that page's click-through rate (CTR). CTR is a statistic Google's algorithm measures when making indexing decisions. Further, videos on Google are not only found in search results, but also in a videos-only section (appropriately titled Videos), seen as a link on the left side of the search results page.

Also, when you upload a video from your site to YouTube, it then lives on the second largest search engine on the web (behind Google, of course); another tremendous opportunity for a user to find your website.

People love watching videos. According to a comScore study, released in February 2011, 82.5 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed a video online, while a Nielsen Company report showed that U.S. users spent almost 45 percent more time viewing online video in January 2011 than during the same period in 2010.

People also enjoy sharing videos. When a user posts a link or shares one of your videos, this results in a backlink directed to your website. And we all know how much Google likes backlinks.

So grab the video camera, have some fun, and improve your visitors' experience and your rankings!